May 14, 2021

Earlier this week, I responded to an email from a best friend’s brother with an immediate phone call (Sasha, it was West!), and it made me so overjoyed to hear his voice. He’s a friend of mine as well, but that big-brotherly component always feels like a warm and fuzzy bonus. Just saying: a short phone call can go a long way—now, and always.

1.

Creatively constrained: I recently learned about the last mid-century’s Polish School of Posters movement, in which Poland’s top artists and designers were only able to publicly work within the particular medium under Communist rule. The Ministry of Arts and Culture commissioned these artists to promote all of the state-owned cultural affairs (films, theatre, exhibitions, circus etc), thus yielding a flourishing and exceptionally prolific period of creative poster art. To see what I’m talking about, you’ll wanna check out this site and online marketplace. They say necessity is the mother of all invention;

2.

Buyer Beware: With the secondhand luxury market booming in China right now, a new course at the Extraordinary Luxuries Business School in Beijing is educating consumers on the savvy tricks and insider secrets for detecting fakes.  It’s a great idea, especially as it revolves around the notion of secondhand, less-wasteful consumption. I’d love to see more courses on sustainable consumption in general: ie, how to see past the hazy buzzwords to truly buy smarter, better, future-minded goods. 

3.

As more of us are shedding our masks, I can’t stop staring at faces— all the faces! Each one is so different and interesting to me, and I find so much beauty in those uniquenesses.

Precious Lee, one of the cover stars of this month’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar, recently offered up this refreshing gem about her own appearance and self-regard towards beauty: “Being from the South has contributed so much to how my family has culturally embraced beauty. I’m so grateful I have my face and my body and I look how I look. Big ups to my parents because I’m such a cute half-and-half version of them. I have such stunning women in my family. My mom is gorgeous. My sister is gorgeous. They are these glamazons walking around, just these really outwardly beautiful people who also have beautiful spirits.” Wow. More, please! I hope that as more of us recognize the individual beauty in others, we’ll ultimately see more of that in ourselves—and vice versa.  

4.

Um, is terra-hotta too lame a pun for this one??? An unlikely, but interesting trend to come out of last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns: ceramics drops.

5.

Paris en haute: I haven’t traveled by airplane in nearly 15 months, and truly, I can’t wait to see the world from above again. Until my next trip back to Paris, here’s at least one way to take in one of my favorite cities from a bird’s eye view. For all the effortless-seeming appeal of that particularly French je ne sais quoi, the perfectly meticulous symmetry of Paris’ parks, gardens, and public places, as seen from above, is proof of just how seriously the French take their urban planning.

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